- Table View
- List View
The Black Raven (The Dragon Mage #2)
by Katharine KerrBook ten of the celebrated Deverry series, an epic fantasy rooted in Celtic mythology that intricately interweaves human and elven history over several hundred years.
Black Powder War: Temeraire, Throne Of Jade, Black Powder War (The Temeraire Series #3)
by Naomi NovikNaomi Novik’s stunning series of novels follow the global adventures of Captain William Laurence and his fighting dragon Temeraire as they are thrown together to fight for Britain during the turbulent time of the Napoleonic Wars.
Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War
by Stephen BourneIn 1914 there were at least 10,000 black Britons, many of African and West Indian heritage, fiercely loyal to their Mother Country. Despite being discouraged from serving in the British Army during the First World War, men managed to join all branches of the armed forces and black communities made a vital contribution, both on the front and at home. By 1918 it is estimated that the black population had trebled to 30,000, and after the war many black soldiers who had fought for Britain decided to make it their home. Black Poppies explores the military and civilian wartime experiences of these men and of women, from the trenches to the music hall. Poignantly, it concludes by examining the anti-black race riots of 1919 in cities like Cardiff and Liverpool, where black men came under attack from returning white soldiers who resented their presence, in spite of what they and their families had done for Britain during the war. The first book of its kind to focus on the Black British experience during the Great War; this new offering from Stephen Bourne is fascinating and eye-opening.
Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community And The Great War
by Stephen BourneDid you know that Black people from around the world helped Britain fight in the First World War?How heroic were the people who fought?Why did Black people have to keep fighting for equality even after the war?In this young readers’ edition of Black Poppies, Stephen Bourne takes us on a hero-filled journey. Explore the many and extraordinary ways in which Black people helped Britain fight the First World War, on the battlefield and at home. After meeting Stephen’s Aunty Esther, we hear the story of Walter Tull, who led soldiers in some of history’s bloodiest battles and died in the fighting just weeks before the conflict would end. Then there is Alhaji Grunshi, an African who fired the first shot of the whole war. Back at home, Black men and women helped by entertaining the people, making materials like bullets and uniforms, and beginning the long fight for equality and the freedom to celebrate being Black and British with pride.
Black Out: An Inspector Troy Thriller (Inspector Troy series #1)
by John LawtonWritten by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' - Daily TelegraphThe first book in John Lawton's Inspector Troy series, selected by Time magazine as one of 'Six Detective Series to Savour' alongside Michael Connelly and Donna Leon.The Blitz, London, 1944.As the Luftwaffe make their last desperate assault on the city, Londoners take to the shelters once again and eagerly await the signal for D-Day. In the East End children lead police to a charred, dismembered corpse buried in a bombsite. The victim is German and it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary murder. For Russian emigré Detective-Sergeant Troy it is the start of a manhunt which will lead him into a world of military intelligence and corruption in high places; a manhunt in which Troy is both the hunter and the hunted.
Black Ops: Tactical Espionage Wargaming (Osprey Wargames #10)
by Guy Bowers Johan Egerkrans Dmitry BurmakBlack Ops is a skirmish wargame of tactical espionage combat that recreates the tension and excitement of modern action-thrillers such as the Bond and Bourne films. The fast-play rules keep all the players in the thick of the action, while the mission generator provides a wide range of options for scenarios – from stealthy extraction or surveillance missions to more overt raids and assaults. Stealth, combat, and technical expertise all have a role to play, and players may recruit a number of different operative types – spies, mercenaries, criminals, hackers, special forces, and many more – to recruit the best possible team for the job. Players may also choose to join a faction – powerful organizations, intelligence agencies, criminal syndicates, militaries, or rebel groups, each with a stake in international affairs. By doing so, their team may receive certain benefits, but may also find itself limited at a crucial time. With the variety offered by the characters, factions, and scenarios, no two games of Black Ops should ever be the same!
Black Ops: Tactical Espionage Wargaming (Osprey Wargames #10)
by Guy Bowers Mr Johan Egerkrans Dmitry BurmakBlack Ops is a skirmish wargame of tactical espionage combat that recreates the tension and excitement of modern action-thrillers such as the Bond and Bourne films. The fast-play rules keep all the players in the thick of the action, while the mission generator provides a wide range of options for scenarios – from stealthy extraction or surveillance missions to more overt raids and assaults. Stealth, combat, and technical expertise all have a role to play, and players may recruit a number of different operative types – spies, mercenaries, criminals, hackers, special forces, and many more – to recruit the best possible team for the job. Players may also choose to join a faction – powerful organizations, intelligence agencies, criminal syndicates, militaries, or rebel groups, each with a stake in international affairs. By doing so, their team may receive certain benefits, but may also find itself limited at a crucial time. With the variety offered by the characters, factions, and scenarios, no two games of Black Ops should ever be the same!
Black Ops: Danny Black Thriller 7 (Danny Black #7)
by Chris RyanTo murder an SAS man is no easy task. So when three former Regiment guys turn up dead, brutally butchered in different corners of the globe, the hunt is on for a pro.But sometimes it takes a killer to catch a killer.Enter Danny Black.When the Regiment legend learns that his prime suspect is a top MI6 agent, highly trained in the SAS's dark arts and currently operating deep under cover, he knows that this will be no ordinary mission. It will be a black op of the highest secrecy and utmost urgency. A black op Hereford will only entrust to Danny.With the help of the target's impressive female MI6 handler, and accompanied by a grizzled bunch of former special forces operatives, the trail will take him across the world: from Hereford to London to the Brecon Beacons, and from the bright lights of Beirut to the badlands of the Syrian desert.But there is more to this mission than Danny can ever know, and in the secret world, sometimes your deadliest enemy is much, much closer to home.In the secret world, the hunter can quickly become the hunted.As the tracer rounds fly and the body count rises, could it be that Danny Black has finally met his match?
The Black Officer Corps: A History of Black Military Advancement from Integration through Vietnam
by Isaac Hampton IIThe U.S. Armed Forces started integrating its services in 1948, and with that push, more African Americans started rising through the ranks to become officers, although the number of black officers has always been much lower than African Americans’ total percentage in the military. Astonishingly, the experiences of these unknown reformers have largely gone unexamined and unreported, until now. The Black Officer Corps traces segments of the African American officers’ experience from 1946-1973. From generals who served in the Pentagon and Vietnam, to enlisted servicemen and officers' wives, Isaac Hampton has conducted over seventy-five oral history interviews with African American officers. Through their voices, this book illuminates what they dealt with on a day to day basis, including cultural differences, racist attitudes, unfair promotion standards, the civil rights movement, Black Power, and the experience of being in ROTC at Historically Black Colleges. Hampton provides a nuanced study of the people whose service reshaped race relations in the U.S. Armed Forces, ending with how the military attempted to control racism with the creation of the Defense Race Relations Institute of 1971. The Black Officer Corps gives us a much fuller picture of the experience of black officers, and a place to start asking further questions.
The Black Officer Corps: A History of Black Military Advancement from Integration through Vietnam
by Isaac Hampton IIThe U.S. Armed Forces started integrating its services in 1948, and with that push, more African Americans started rising through the ranks to become officers, although the number of black officers has always been much lower than African Americans’ total percentage in the military. Astonishingly, the experiences of these unknown reformers have largely gone unexamined and unreported, until now. The Black Officer Corps traces segments of the African American officers’ experience from 1946-1973. From generals who served in the Pentagon and Vietnam, to enlisted servicemen and officers' wives, Isaac Hampton has conducted over seventy-five oral history interviews with African American officers. Through their voices, this book illuminates what they dealt with on a day to day basis, including cultural differences, racist attitudes, unfair promotion standards, the civil rights movement, Black Power, and the experience of being in ROTC at Historically Black Colleges. Hampton provides a nuanced study of the people whose service reshaped race relations in the U.S. Armed Forces, ending with how the military attempted to control racism with the creation of the Defense Race Relations Institute of 1971. The Black Officer Corps gives us a much fuller picture of the experience of black officers, and a place to start asking further questions.
The Black Joke: The True Story of One British Ship's Battle Against the Slave Trade
by A. E. RooksInitially a slaving vessel itself, the Black Joke was captured in 1827 and repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots. Over the next five years, the vessel liberated more enslaved people than any other in Britain's West Africa Squadron.As Britain attempted to snuff out the transatlantic slave trade by way of treaty and negotiation, enforcing these policies fell to ships such as the Black Joke as they battled slavers, weather disasters, and interpersonal drama among captains and crew that reverberated across oceans.The Black Joke is a crucial and deeply compelling work of history, both as a reckoning with slavery and abolition and as a lesson about the power of political will - or the lack thereof.
Black Jade: Book Three Of The Ea Cycle (The Ea Cycle #3)
by David ZindellThe third book in the Ea Cycle, BLACK JADE is as rich as Tolkien and as magical as the Arthurian myths
Black Hearts: One platoon's descent into madness in the Iraq war's triangle of death
by Jim Frederick'The best book by far about the Iraq war' Guardian Iraq, 2005. A platoon of young soldiers from a U.S. regiment known as ‘the Black Heart Brigade’ is deployed to a lawless and hyperviolent area south of Baghdad. As the unstopping violence destroys their morale, the soldiers descend into brutality, substance abuse and madness – with horrific results. Black Hearts is a timeless story of how warfare can reduce men to animals. Told with insight and compassion, but with the magnetic pace of a thriller, it is one of the defining books about the Iraq War. 'There have been many books about the Iraq war, but this is an unusally gripping one ... A shocking story, vividly told' Max Hastings, Sunday Times
Black Flag Down: Counter-extremism, defeating ISIS and winning the battle of ideas
by Liam ByrneThe West is facing a terror threat unprecedented since the Cold War: a revolution in the accessibility of violence as ISIS, al Qaeda and their allies set out to build a 21st-century theocracy of seventh-century values, stretching from Portugal to Pakistan.We need to dramatically step up the fightback - yet we're at risk of plunging into our enemies' trap of divide and rule. At home, we risk becoming a suspicious society, scarred by Islamophobia, where British Muslims fear being seen as the enemy within. Online, we're fighting extremist recruiters on the digital battlefront with one hand tied behind our back. And in the Middle East, we lack the strategy or grand coalition needed to isolate and undermine our enemy in the battle of ideas.From Iraq to the streets of inner-city Birmingham, Liam Byrne MP brings together two years of fresh research with young British Muslims, frank interviews with intelligence and police officers, and frontline reports from the Middle East to answer the critical question: how do we defeat the new empire of intolerance? In this timely examination of the rise of ISIS, Byrne offers bold new answers for handling one of the biggest challenges of our time: bringing down the black flag of extremism.
Black Flag: Assassin's Creed Book 6 (Assassin's Creed #6)
by Oliver BowdenAssassin's Creed: Black Flag is the sixth title in Oliver Bowden's phenomenally successful Assassin's Creed videogame tie-in series.It's the Golden Age of Piracy - a time when greed, ambition and corruption overcome all loyalties - and a brash young captain, Edward Kenway, is making his name known for being one of the greatest pirates of his day.In the brilliant new novel, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, discover the story of how Edward, a young privateer, became one of the world's most deadly pirates and was drawn into the centuries-old battle between the Templars and the Assassins.The immersive story of the Assassins is continued in Oliver Bowden's gripping sixth Assassin's Creed novel, following Renaissance, Brotherhood, The Secret Crusade, Revelations and Forsaken.Oliver Bowden is the pen-name of an acclaimed novelist.
Black Flag: A gripping military thriller from ex-Special Forces Commander Brad Taylor (Taskforce Novella #3)
by Brad TaylorIt was meant to be a simple mission... The Taskforce – a highly clandestine Special Forces unit – is deployed on a maritime mission. They must locate the precious contraband of an infamous pirate, Edward Teach. Soon the Taskforce team find themselves at the mercy of an enemy unlike any other. These modern-day pirates have an insidious plan. One that leaves the Taskforce fighting for their very survival. The Taskforce are out of their depth in this adrenaline-fuelled novella, from New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor. Praise for Brad Taylor: 'It's an excellent read, and I greatly enjoyed it' Nelson DeMille. 'Pike ranks right up there with Jason Bourne, Jack Reacher and Jack Bauer' John Lescroart. 'Logan is a tough, appealing hero you're sure to root for' Joseph Finder. 'Fresh plot, great actions, and Taylor clearly knows what he is writing about' Vince Flynn.
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning
by Timothy SnyderLONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE We have come to see the Holocaust as a factory of death, organised by bureaucrats. Yet by the time the gas chambers became operation more than a million European Jews were already dead: shot at close range over pits and ravines. They had been murdered in the lawless killing zones created by the German colonial war in the East, many on the fertile black earth that the Nazis believed would feed the German people.It comforts us to believe that the Holocaust was a unique event. But as Timothy Snyder shows, we have missed basic lessons of the history of the Holocaust, and some of our beliefs are frighteningly close to the ecological panic that Hitler expressed in the 1920s. As ideological and environmental challenges to the world order mount, our societies might be more vulnerable than we would like to think.Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands was an acclaimed exploration of what happened in eastern Europe between 1933 and 1945, when Nazi and Soviet policy brought death to some 14 million people. Black Earth is a deep exploration of the ideas and politics that enabled the worst of these policies, the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Its pioneering treatment of this unprecedented crime makes the Holocaust intelligible, and thus all the more terrifying.
The Black Douglases: War and Lordship in Medieval Scotland 1300–1455
by Michael BrownDuring the century and a half of their power the Black Douglases earned fame as Scotland’s champions in the front line of war against England. On their shields they bore the bloody heart of Robert Bruce, the symbol of their claim to be the physical protectors of the hero-king’s legacy. But others saw the power of these lords and earls of Douglas in a different light. To their critics the Douglases were a force for disorder in the kingdom, lawless, arrogant and violent, whose power rested on coercion and whose defiance of kings and guardians ultimately provoked James II into slaying the Douglas earl with his own hand.Michael Brown analyses the rise and fall of this family as the dominant magnates of the south, from the deeds of the Good Sir James Douglas in the service of Bruce to the violent destruction of the Douglas earls in the 1450s. Alongside this study of the accumulation and loss of power by one of the great noble houses, The Black Douglases includes a series of thematic examinations of the nature of aristocratic power. In particular these emphasise the link between warfare and political power in southern Scotland during the fourteenth century. For the Black Douglases, war was not just a patriotic duty but the means to power and fame in Scotland and across Europe.
Black Cross (A\world War Ii Thriller Ser.)
by Greg IlesA thriller that is ‘on fire with suspense’ (Stephen King) from the New York Times No. 1 bestseller Greg Iles. A secret mission into the dark heart of the Third Reich – to commit an unimaginable act of destruction, in the name of peace.
Black Country to Red China: One girl's story from war-torn England to Revolutionary China
by Esther Cheo YingBorn in pre-Revolutionary China and brought up in the Midlands, Esther Cheo Ying returned to China in 1949 after a traumatic childhood, convinced that there she would find the happiness and sense of belonging she longed for. Caught up in the turmoil of civil war and sympathetic to the Communist Revolution, she joined the Red Army and then stayed on to work in the new People's Republic. But despite her determination to make a new life in China could she truly be happy in a country which encouraged constant self-criticism and viewed her as a 'false foreign devil'? Black Country to Red China is an extraordinary account of life before the Cultural Revolution, but it is also a fascinating insight into one woman's struggle to come to terms with your own identity.
The Black Count: Glory, revolution, betrayal and the real Count of Monte Cristo
by Tom ReissWINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY 2013‘Completely absorbing’ Amanda Foreman'Enthralling’ Guardian‘The Three Musketeers! The Count of Monte Cristo! The stories of courseare fiction. But here a prize-winning author shows us that the inspiration forthe swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Dumas’s own father, Alex - the sonof a marquis and a black slave... He achieved a giddy ascent from privatein the Dragoons to the rank of general; an outsider who had grown upamong slaves, he was all for Liberty and Equality. Alex Dumas was thestuff of legend’ Daily MailSo how did such this extraordinary man get erased by history? Why arethere no statues of ‘Monsieur Humanity’ as his troops called him? TheBlack Count uncovers what happened and the role Napoleon played inDumas’s downfall. By walking the same ground as Dumas - from Haiti tothe Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto – Reiss, like the novelistbefore him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero.‘Entrances from first to last. Dumas the novelist would be proud’Independent‘Brilliant’ Glasgow Herald
The Black Corridor
by Michael MoorcockThe world is sick. The Forces of Chaos have energised the planet. Leaders, führers, duces, prophets, visionaries, gurus, and politicians are all at each others' throats. And Chaos leers over the broken body of Order.So Ryan freezes his family into suspended animation and sets off for the planet Munich 15040, five years distant. There he will re-establish Order in a New World - and create a happier, healthier, saner and more decent society with the ones he loves.But they are suspended. And they cannot talk. And he is alone in space. And he has been travelling for three years. And he will still be travelling two years hence, and he cannot see his destination, and he is ALONE and LOST and CRACKING UP...
The Black Banners Declassified: How Torture Derailed The War On Terror After 9/11
by Ali SoufanA new, fully uncensored edition of the definitive insider's account of the War on Terror'A former FBI agent's memoir on the War on Terror is declassified after 9 years' Time'One of the most valuable and detailed accounts of its subject to appear in the past decade' EconomistThe ultimate insider's account of the battle against terrorism, Ali Soufan's revelatory account of his history-making decade as the FBI's lead investigator into al-Qaeda shaped our understanding of counter-terror operations - and led to hard questions being asked of American and British leaders. When The Black Banners was first published in 2011, significant portions of the text were redacted. After a CIA review those restrictions have been lifted, and the result is this explosive new edition, The Black Banners (Declassified). Alongside a new foreword by Soufan, the declassified documents uncover shocking details on the use of torture on terror suspects, how these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' failed to secure reliable intelligence, and in fact actively derailed the fight against al-Qaeda. By contrast we see Soufan at work using empathy and intelligent questioning - not force or violence - to extract some of the most important confessions in the war.Taking us from the interrogation rooms where Soufan would share food and films with the suspects so he could bond with them, to the hideouts of bin Laden, Ali Soufan reveals with intimate, first-hand knowledge the unbelievable truth about America's security agencies, 9/11, and the global 'War on Terror'.
The Black Art of Killing
by Matthew HallTHE ACTION-PACKED THRILLER THAT FUSES BRAWN AND BRAINS Oxford University has never employed a man like Leo Black before.Now an adored lecturer destined for tenure among the gleaming spires, Leo Black served the SAS for twenty years with distinction.When the friend he fought alongside is killed in Paris trying to prevent the abduction of a young British scientist, the world Leo has tried to put behind him begins to reel him back in. But as Leo gets closer to the startling truth about his friend's death, he faces a difficult decision.Forget the training, the loyalty, the service and be the man the university wants him to be . . .Or remember that not so long ago, he was a truly exceptional soldier. Praise for Matthew Hall 'Breathlessly enjoyable' The Times 'An edge-of-the-seat thriller . . . should come with a health warning' Irish Independent 'Fasten your seatbelts for a quality thriller . . .' Independent on Sunday